


salvation damnation rebellion

by most_curiously_blue_eyes



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Physical Abuse, Sibling Incest, Violence, dark themes, heed the warnings in the tags, how the fuck did i forget to tag incest, past relationships fuck you up, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/most_curiously_blue_eyes/pseuds/most_curiously_blue_eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beginning is this:<br/>Mairon cannot create and it drives everyone around him mad with emotions they can or cannot contain.<br/>Melkor is - he, he thinks, he doesn't really know what - angry. Scared. Aroused. Bored. He doesn't know.<br/>He is fucked up. He is fucked up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	salvation damnation rebellion

**Author's Note:**

> This may just be the most twisted thing I've ever written.  
> Warnings once more to be safe: rape/non-con (believe me, there's lots of it here), all kinds of abuse, abandonment issues, mental breakdown, degrading language, gore, abusive relationships and probably more - please message me if there any more things I should tag.
> 
> Additional warning: song lyrics written by me. Every time I try to poet deserves a warning of its own.
> 
> Alternative summary: I have a lot of Melkor feels and when I let them out, this is what comes out.

 

1.

'So, Mairon,' Gothmog speaks up carefully, avoiding gazing directly at his best friend; it's clear he is uncomfortable, but Melkor doesn't much sympathize: the subject that is about to be brought up is one that does need to be breached at last if they are hoping to start recording any time this decade.

'Yea?' Mairon says, glancing up at Gothmog. He looks awful, really, with his hair too flat and unwashed, his eyes perpetually reddened and shadowed, his face too pale and still much too beautiful for his own good – or for Melkor's libido to handle, even despite all that and the accompanying bags under the vocalist's eyes. The same golden eyes which scan the room now, pause on Melkor for an infinitesimal moment in time and move back to Gothmog.

'How's that writing going?' The drummer asks. It is the main topic of all their concerns, really – the question that weighs rather heavily on their minds.

Mairon, apparently, does not care nearly half as much, for he returns without further ado to doodling bubbles and squiggles in his notebook. Melkor notices that the notebook itself is brand new, definitely not Mairon' favourite moleskin that contains all his work, even the lyrics to some of the songs from their debut album: some of Mairon' most brilliant masterpieces. No, this notebook is less elegant, two times smaller and if Melkor is not mistaken, it has a grinning cartoon shark on the cover. It's also thin and slowly filling with nonsense.

Gothmog glares at the top of their vocalist's head as Mairon seems to ignore him in favour of drawing crooked little pink hearts on the margins. Melkor feels his temper flare; sometimes, Mairon acts like a selfish, conceited kid – just like now, and Melkor would know, his ex had enough kids to man a football team – and he always gets away with it because he's pretty and talented and nobody wants to hurt his feelings. Well, Melkor is not really sure being all that warrants for a blank check of forgiveness and understanding. He has almost none left of either, himself. Judging from what he sees of the rest of the band – Thuringwethil pretending unsuccessfully not to scowl, Glaurung drumming his fingers against the surface of the table – they are also running out.

'Aulendil, you do know that we can't have you shirking your duties for much longer, right?' Melkor asks finally, realizing nobody else, not even Gothmog, is going to call their precious special snowflake of a vocalist out on his bullshit.

'My duties, Bauglir?' Mairon inquires, lifting a single eyebrow, and fuck it if he doesn't make Melkor want to push him against the wall and take out all frustrations on that lithe, doubtlessly freckled pale body. Especially now, when he has the nerve to look offended. Indignation only serves to make him that much more attractive... not that he didn't use to be _fucking hot_ when he was his normal, orderly, practical and pragmatic self.

'Yeah, your fucking obligations,' Melkor grinds out. He cannot, obviously, fuck Mairon against the nearest horizontal or vertical surface – he has no preference for either – so he settles for the next best thing: verbal assault.

'What, pray tell, do you mean?' Mairon asks, voice low and a little hoarse. Gothmog is looking at them nervously, but Melkor ignores him even when he indicates for him to stop. Why should he stop now? He is just getting started.

(He is vicious and wild, he is the spirit of wrath, untamed-)

'What I mean, _my friend_ , is that we've been waiting for your shitty lyrics for months now. We pushed the release date by half a year because you cannot be bothered to finish the task which you absolutely will not let anyone else undertake,' he says, voice raised a notch, laced with all the irritation he is feeling and then some. 'We should have started recording weeks ago, but to date you have not produced a single song text that we could use. What the fuck?'

For a moment, Melkor thinks Mairon may actually retaliate with a punch. He would welcome it, for it would give him a perfect excuse to beat that pretty face up beyond recognition and maybe grab that disgusting filthy hair, and certainly fantasizing about hitting someone has to be somewhat wrong, has to say something interesting about his mind and how fucked-up it is. At times – more often than not – Melkor worries. This is not one of these times. This cannot be one of these times.

When Mairon doesn't try to attack him physically, he is a little disappointed that his harsh words seem to have no effect whatsoever – until he looks at the younger man, sees the hurt in his eyes, some kind of despair he doesn't remember seeing there ever before but that he knows well enough because he sees it in the mirror every morning – right before Mairon gets up and simply walks out on them.

'Good job, Bauglir,' Thuringwethil congratulates him, clapping Melkor on the shoulder. She's smirking and her tone is mocking, but it's still better than the glares the rest of the band – even Gothmog, who's usually scared shitless of him – are sending his way. 'I never knew you had it in you to insult the guy this much, but you've outdone yourself. Do you think he's crying manly tears out there by himself?'

'Thurry,' Glaurung warns.

'What?' Thuringwethil asks and shrugs her shoulders. 'Guys, let's be honest here. Princess Aulendil is useless right now, so I vote we either write the fucking lyrics or we have a professional do it for us, then we get him to sing and we release this Void-damned album.'

'He can't sing songs he hasn't written,' Gothmog reminds them all, as though they could forget, as though Mairon would let them forget – and Thuringwethil replies with,

'Damn right he can't, because _they haven't been written yet_. Don't you see how he's ruining us? It was cute at the beginning, but it stopped being funny. Gothmog, you need to look at the bigger picture. You're our manager now, not just the drummer. Not just his best friend.'

Meaning it's down to the old drama again; when their old manager was arrested earlier this year on charges of sexual assault (and good riddance), they were forced to find a replacement as soon as possible. Gothmog, who is the only one of them that had prior experience in managing _anything at all_ (besides Mairon who could manage a fucking flying circus if he wanted, but he doesn't want to), stepped up to fill the role splendidly. Still, however, he has periods when he appears to coddle Mairon too much, to allow him certain exceptions from all rules that he should not be allowed. He's a great manager – it's only that he's also a great best friend, and he can't seem to separate the two too well, which Thuringwethil always likes to point out.

Melkor is too tired of this shit, to be honest, and with Mairon no longer in the room, he's also not very much interested in prolonging his own presence. For all it's worth, he could just as well go to the audio room in the basement, try to practice some, same difference would it make. He's frustrated – with Mairon, with Gothmog, with Thuringwethil, mostly with himself. And to think, he originally founded the band to realize his dreams. To finally forget the past and move on.

That seems like so long ago.

'I'll go and find our drama queen,' he says and excuses himself, leaving the others staring after him. He has not the slightest idea where Mairon might have run to, but it doesn't stop him from searching for their wreck of a vocalist. Usually, a crowd of squealing fans would be indication enough to Mairon Aulendil's whereabouts, but right now, looking like a hobo as he does, the kid probably doesn't turn too many heads at all. Which might be for the best. At least the paparazzi are unable to recognize him like this. Tabloids getting a whiff of their precious vocalist having a fucking depression in the middle of working on a new album is the last thing they need.

Eventually, he finds Mairon in an empty broom closet, where the kid is sitting alone in the furthest corner from the door, unperturbed by the literally giant spider on the wall, inching closer and closer to him with every second. He's crying, Melkor notices, or he has been crying and he's not quite calm yet.

'There's a spider crawling towards you,' Melkor warns and Mairon is standing up immediately, moving away from the creature as though it really did have the power to kill him with a single touch of hairy limb. But the closet is small, as closets are prone to be, and the action leaves them too close, almost pressed into one another. Melkor suppresses an irrational urge to hug Mairon to make him feel better; it would be counter-productive, probably, because he means to make Mairon feel bad about being so shitty at writing lately.

If he does take out a lot of other frustrations on the man occasionally, well. He supposes he can feel guilty about it later. Once he learns to care about anything at all.

'Are you ready to go back?' He asks and frowns when it comes out too soft, as though his voice is betraying him and acting on its own accord. He wonders if it's possible that separate parts of his body developed a will of their own under the influence of Mairon' pretty golden eyes. It's a fleeting thought. Sometimes, even the fearsome and mysterious Melkor “Morgoth” Bauglir thinks of nonsense like all the normal people.

'I don't want to,' Mairon mutters, very carefully avoiding looking at Melkor. 'You were right, you know,' he continues and sighs. 'I'm a failure. To be honest, I've been a failure since that business with Huan. I can't seem to string words together anymore. They just don't fit – don't make sense together. That spark I used to have, that glimmer of inspiration, it's just not there anymore,' he confesses and Melkor actually feels his heart clench painfully at the sadness he is witness to, because more clearly than ever, he can finally see the truth.

'It was you, wasn't it,' he states more than asks, lifts his hand to awkwardly pat Mairon on the arm and gives up on the idea when he sees the man flinch at the almost-touch. 'The victim who broke the silence and reported him. That was you.'

Mairon doesn't reply, but he doesn't need to – his shaking alone is telling enough. Melkor feels like such a bastard now. He never thought he'd stoop so low as basically calling a depressed rape victim worthless, but here he is. The worst thing is, he literally has no excuse for his actions; even though he didn't know before, he still did know that Mairon was depressed and still, he didn't hesitate when it came to delivering the most painful verbal blows. It's what makes him scum. He's no different from that fucking bastard Huan at all.

He's worse.

'I'm sorry,' he says, for what it's worth.

Mairon bites his lip – and it's sick how attractive Melkor finds the notion even now, even knowing what he knows – before he finally looks up at Melkor.

'I got over it,' he says simply. 'I don't even remember most of it, I was drunk and possibly high when it happened,' he explains.

Melkor tries to put the information together to work out a date estimate, but the only occasion he remembers seeing Mairon drunk at is Gothmog's birthday, a whole month before Huan was apprehended. It was right after Melkor got back together with Feanor briefly, shortly before that flight plummeted from the sky into the volcano during his world-wide trip with the _wife._ Mairon was acting weird that evening, he drank himself into a pitiful state before he disappeared somewhere around midnight.

Melkor was the one who invited Huan to Gothmog's party, to perpetuate friendly relations with the manager on loan from fucking Eldamar Inc. Almost seven months later, he regrets this decision like he has never regretted anything in his life.

'Mairon,' he starts, but he finds he has nothing to say. He's no good at comforting people. All he's good at is breaking them, then driving them away.

'No, the thing is,' Mairon speaks up, falters, shakes his head and continues, 'the thing, is that all I ever wanted was for you to acknowledge my existence, and when you finally do, it's just to tell me how I suck at everything and how I'm useless. I knew all that already, but when you say it, it just hurts too much and I can't... I can't do this anymore, Melkor. I don't have the strength to go on like this.'

The confession – it is a confession of... something, isn't it? - renders Melkor speechless and all he can do is stare at Mairon in confusion. He refuses to draw conclusions from this, refuses to let his own mind warp and twist the words so that they suit his purposes, turns them around in his head instead to make sense of them as they are. Tries to remember if he really did treat Mairon as though he didn't exist. Realizes that yes, he still does that quite efficiently, especially during interviews, when he's quick to praise Glaurung on guitar, Thuringwethil on bass, Gothmog on drums – but never their vocalist. He never mentions Mairon at all, and he knows why – it's out of fear that he might one day say something improper, something embarrassing if true – but Mairon doesn't and it must seem to him as though Melkor has nothing good to say, so he elects to not talk about him at all.

And then Melkor goes and attacks him with hurtful remarks just to make himself feel better about some unresolved sexual tension. _Way to go, Bauglir._ _No wonder even the fans hate you._

'Just, take this,' Mairon says softly and hands Melkor his notebook. 'And leave me alone. I need time. I need,' he trails off, tries to gesticulate, but whatever it is he wants to communicate, he gives up halfway and just walks away. Melkor doesn't stop him.

He's staring at the notebook in his hands, the same notebook that Mairon never let anyone see for more than a few stolen glances, the one supposedly filled with doodles and squiggles. It's labelled on the front page – _to M.: King of Arda_ \- and most of its pages are covered with words. Song lyrics, Melkor realizes immediately. He can't read them here. He can't read them in the hall in front of the broom closet, with the giant spider crawling along the wall, like they mean nothing, because obviously they mean everything to Mairon.

He texts Gothmog that Mairon is gone and that he's leaving as well. He doesn't wait for the reply, since he already knows he's going to be mad. Tough luck.

 

2.

On the way home, he is deep in thought; he reminisces about the past: his first steps in show-biz, his conflict with Manwe who used to be known as his “more successful twin”, his first band after breaking away from Eldamar Inc. (he still misses Utumno sometimes, but he is willing to admit they were probably not one of the best or most original dark metal groups at the time). He thinks of the beginnings of Angband, the _seduction of Mairon_ as they used to call it back in the day: when they effectively stole the young and innocent kid from Eldamar Inc, right from under Manwe's nose. It's hard to believe that Mairon was actually interning there as a _PA._ Gothmog, who knew him from high school, invited him out to karaoke one night.

That night changed the face of dark metal forever. That night made _Mairon Aulendil_ the new face of the genre.

Melkor remembers all this as he sits in his living room, breathing in the scent of dust and the irritating smell detergent the cleaning lady must have used when she was there that morning. He hesitates before he opens the notebook in his lap further than the first page; he stares, instead, at Mairon's elegant script which could easily be printed on wedding invitations or something, at the curled letters written in cursive. It's all so inherently _Mairon_ : not a single dot out of place, but simultaneously very much over the top. Everything about Mairon is over the top, Melkor thinks, and he's not entirely sure if it's fondness he feels at the thought or frustration. Most likely both.

He flips the page to the first lyrics. The text is messy, he notices with a start: as though the author didn't care one bit if his writing was legible. Huge blocks of it are struck out, some words are written over, emboldened, then written over with a different colour ink. There's a title, also struck out, but still visible on top of the page:

 

_**He Who Arises in Might** _

 

Melkor frowns, wondering why the hell Mairon would feel the need to write down the supposed ancient translation of his name of all things, but his gaze is inevitably drawn to the lyrics underneath.

 

_The world is but a play thingground for you_

_a plaything to be cast in your fire_

_a never-ending cycle of destabili **destruction** and ~~p~~ **hate**_

_an overflowing sea of your ruin_

 

_Who will you turn to when you fall_

_Who will you yearn for when all comes to an end_

_Who will you call when the pain starts_

_ Whose soul will you devour to postpone your own death _

_Whose soul will you devour to postpone your own death_

 

_salvation damnation rebellion ~~what the fuck this shit makes no sense~~_

 

_My love love is surely nothing to you ~~I hate this stupid son of a bitch, I hate him I hate him hatehatehate~~_

_a trinket to be lost in desire too dark to ~~haha whatever~~_

_to rule to destroy to dominate to corrupt_

_the world is ever at your feet ~~ **suck my mother-fucking asshole Morgoth**~~_

 

_Who will you turn to when you fall_

_Who will you yearn for when all comes to an end_

_Who will you call when the pain starts_

_Whose soul will you devour_

~~_okay I guess I can leave this shit like this, whatever, I'll revise it later_ ~~

 

_salvation damnation rebellion_

 

_He Who Arises in Might haha no shit, go be more obvious, there's no fucking way I'll sing this in front of an audience_

_I call out your name, I beg for your love mercy_

_At dawn of the war you will fight_

_Against your delusions and madness and mortality_

_Don't you see I kinda wanna ride your dick_

~~_wow so dark_ ~~

 

_Who will I turn to when you fall_

_Who will I yearn for when all comes to an end_

_Who will I call, who will I call                       GHostBUSters fucking yes what_

_salvation damnation rebellion_

_Don't you see?_

 

_He Who Arises in Might_

_I call out your name, I beg for your mercy_

_At dawn of the war you will fight_

_Against your delusions and madness and mortality_

_He who has fallen from grace_

_I long for the time when I begged for your mercy_

_I will set this whole world ablaze I kinda might_

_To build a memento of my love and insanity for you, for you_

_Don't you see_

_He Who Arises in Might_

 

If Melkor were a poet, he probably would have some heavy critique for the lyrics; he knows it's something poets like to do to each other. Manwe is a poet, after all, and he is quick to judge others and condemn them for eternity. As it is, Melkor knows he's got no talent for writing whatsoever – his ability lies in composing music, after all – and so, he's easily won over by sufficiently dark and sad lyrics. It takes him but a second to start coming up with a melody, and before long, he's furiously scribbling down notes in the same notebook, right across the page from Mairon's lyrics.

It's two hours later when he rises his head, the look of satisfaction evident on his face. It's done. He's just made a song to fit the lyrics, and he's fucking happy with it. It's been a long time since he last felt this accomplished; maybe he hasn't been like this in years, not since Utumno. Right now, he can easily close his eyes and imagine Mairon's voice, deep and seductive and slightly hoarse, like it gets after some screaming on stage, as it wraps around the words of his own creation to sing to Melkor's music. He would allow it to seduce his listeners, like he always does, and he would prolong the harsh consonants like he is wont to do when he falls back to his original Valarin accent. Some of the lyrics, maybe he would whisper, husky and throaty and inappropriate. There would be no growling or screaming, not in this song; Melkor loves the idea of it being a fast-paced, sickly-sweet ballad of insanity and desperation and rage and everything else, and he knows Mairon will do it like he wants it, because Mairon always follows his lead in the end.

'He loves me,' Melkor realizes suddenly, as though the evidence wasn't there in front of him this whole time when he was merrily devising music to the words which basically amounted to a confession. '… that's unexpected,' he mutters to himself.

The signs have always been there and he can kind of see it now. The way Mairon would always do as he asked, be it in band matters or in private life: once, after the release of “War of Wrath”, the vocalist was so devoted to following his orders, Melkor could dictate his wardrobe if he wanted. He didn't. He was... at a bad place back then, and he didn't use to notice much of what was going on around him. To be honest, he still isn't very much over Feanor, over their relationship based on lies and hurting one another in the most creative ways – but Feanor is dead and it was all a long time ago anyway.

Maybe one day, Feanor's extended family of approximately three hundred sons will leave him the fuck alone, although Melkor doesn't count on it.

Mairon though, Mairon being in love with him is... well. Melkor knows three things for sure about himself. First, he's chaotic as fuck and he has no intention of reforming. As in, he does stuff without any particular order about it, he doesn't care where he puts his shit, he doesn't need a reason to suddenly start laughing in the middle of the street or to demolish a hotel room. Second, he's actually rather violent in nature, dominant, too, and he tries to make the world revolve around him at every opportunity because it's what he feels is right. Third, he's pretty much a selfish dick who doesn't care much about others at all. Yeah, he kind of sometimes extends some affection to his fans, but other than that, he's not sure he is even capable of liking someone. Feanor obviously didn't count. Melkor thinks he hated the guy more than he ever loved him, anyway.

But Mairon, Mairon is his exact opposite. He enjoys order and structures, he wants everything to be put in one clear and solid line always, and he's a neat freak. He hates being told what to do most of the time, although in this aspect, he seems to make an exception for Melkor, which, yes, should have been a clue the size of the Void, but Melkor can be dumb sometimes; anyway, even if he would maybe yield to Melkor, Mairon still wants the world to revolve around _him_ and so it's pretty much a conflict of interests between them. And he's an attention-seeking spotlight thief. Melkor not paying attention to him may have been more hurtful to him than the verbal abuse.

_Which one of us is the stupid one, I wonder_ , Melkor thinks to himself with dark amusement that tastes bitter on his tongue.  _Is it him for falling in love with a fucking abuser, or is it me, the clueless, dumb ass abuser? Take a wild guess, Bauglir, you dumb fuck. If this fucks up the band, you'll have yourself to thank._

He doesn't really think about how it reflects on him that the band is his main concern and not Mairon. He's a selfish dick. Of that, he is aware.

 

3.

The next day finds the whole band at a somewhat tight spot: they can't do much of anything because Mairon is so terribly hungover, he's barely able to open his eyes without being in excruciating pain. It's a nightmare. Thuringwethil is so angry, she has to step out of the studio before she kills someone; Glaurung sighs and lounges on the couch in the back room where he swiftly falls asleep to dreams of all the money he could be making (probably), Gothmog wordlessly packs up and leaves. He will come back in a few hours with coffee and doughnuts, and he will pretend everything is fine, and maybe he will not get arrested for the devastated park benches and trash containers in the neighbourhood (he won't. A disgruntled teenage kid will be accused of the act of vandalism instead. Comically enough, said kid is one of Feanor's sons who's out there to spy on Melkor's antics and maybe find a way to cause him some trouble. Not that Melkor will ever find out and be able to appreciate the irony).

This leaves Melkor alone with Mairon, and the combination of depressed and wasted in their vocalist grates on Melkor's nerves a lot. But he has some sympathy and doesn't say a thing. He's even merciful: he plugs a set of headphones to his guitar and tries not to disturb the kid too much with the sounds he makes. He's busy with the third page of Mairon's notebook, which contains some more lyrics, a very charming drawing of a bat with a severed head (Melkor supposes it's meant to be Thuringwethil, but he's not very sure – the bat has some semblance to him as well) and a whole lot of words which make no sense at all. They could be lyrics as well, for all he knows: sometimes, Mairon's creativity surpasses the boundaries of Melkor's limited understanding of poetry and at those times, it's better to just go along with it, even when Mairon decides he really wants the whole song to be just the words “There is no life in the Void, only death” repeated for approximately eight minutes in different tones of voice, to a haunting music and a choir of whispers.

Inexplicably, that song made the Top Ten Songs of the Year.

The lyrics Melkor is currently stuck on read,

 

_A night which fell against the starless sky is choking up my throat_

_A sight of rotting flesh and protruding bones welcomes me home_

_What else am I to behold if not the hell of my own choosing_

_A fire burns inside me, devouring all I once felt, making me immune_

 

_Over this whole time I knew what it means to die in fire_

_Over my whole life I kept hoping for a way out_

 

_A dread which fills the mortal flesh of all that lives hurts me inside_

_A paralyzing fear that never once will I get to hold you close_

_How else am I supposed to make you want me if not by hurting you?_

_A fire burns inside me, filling me with darkness, your kiss tastes like smoke_

_You taste of ash and smoke_

 

_Fire flames gentle hands darkness anger futile pain_

_Singed flower deformed broken damaged corrupted vain_

_Forced coerced severed shattered shackled torn apart_

_Bold caresses docile smiles burnt corpses a loss_

_Over and over and over and over and over and over_

_and over and over and over and over and_

_over_

 

It's the last part that is giving him a headache because he's not sure if it's something more than just a pile of nonsense words. He can kind of notice a theme in them, maybe, but it's more like a stream of thought than a real verse. Would it make sense in a song? Should it continue with the melody of the whole piece or should it acquire its own theme? Maybe changing the pacing for this part would work. Maybe not. Incoherent text, incoherent music – it may just work.

'You're not shouting abuse at me today,' Mairon says softly when Melkor removes the headphones and gets up to grab a soda from the vending machine. He looks, well, terrible, but at least he seems to have showered – his hair is no longer filthy. It's still matted and flat, the previously almost golden glow lost on the copper tresses, but it's progress anyway.

'I won't,' Melkor replies, distracted by the way Mairon's hair moves in the air blown by the AC. He realizes a clarification is needed when the vocalist stares at him, a wonderfully blank look of incomprehension adorning his pretty, freckled face. 'I won't shout abuse at you. You obviously made yourself miserable enough without my help.'

'Oh, you helped plenty,' Mairon snorts. It's not attractive – or it shouldn't be, but somehow is, like everything about this stupid little piece of shit.

'I bet. Did you drink yourself half to death, whining to nobody in particular about how I'm a right bastard?' Melkor asks, but the tone he uses is teasing at best. Still, to somehow soften the impact, he brings over a glass of water to where Mairon dwells on the giant armchair. He joins the vocalist, sitting on the armrest. 'Here, drink water. It's supposed to help. I have no idea how, but that's what all those ads say.'

'Thanks,' Mairon mutters and downs the glass in a single gulp. The way he swallows a whole mouthful makes Melkor incredibly horny. It's kind of disturbing; it's been a while since he last had some, but this is getting extreme even for a sick fuck like him.

'I didn't whine much,' Mairon adds after he sets the glass on the floor. 'I never do. I used to write down every sad thought I had to make into lyrics, you know,' he confesses and leans against the back of the armchair.

'But now you stopped?' Melkor inquires. He's intrigued. This right now might be the longest conversation he's had with Mairon... ever. It's weird, he realizes. Angband has been a thing for four years. They've made two full albums and six maxi-singles together over that time. They've met for band practice countless times. They've had four major international tours. All this, but the two of them have never had a proper conversation.

Melkor has the uncomfortable idea that he may be at fault here.

'I told you. I can't write. I just can't,' Mairon mutters. He sounds every bit as frustrated as Melkor feels about the situation. 'It's infuriating, and it's your fault. You have no idea how many times I've contemplated killing you just so that I would be at peace for once.'

'You wouldn't be,' Melkor replies automatically, 'my death wouldn't help. You'd just hate me all the more for it.'

It takes a second for his brain to catch up with his mouth, and when it does, Melkor frowns. The fuck? Sharing is caring and all that, but he sure as Void doesn't want to talk about Feanor and his seriously fucked up relationship with that guy, so why did he bring it up? He needs to stop. He wants to stop.

Damn, it was almost better when he didn't care about Mairon's well-being at all.

_I still don't_ , he tells himself. _It's just that the kid is irreplaceable in the band. Losing him would be losing everything._

_I don't care about him._

'I don't hate you,' Mairon says, perplexed. 'Really, I should. Look what you did to me. Look what you still do to me. But I don't. Hate you. I don't hate you,' he sighs. He's got one hundred and sixty-seven freckles on his face. Or more. Melkor wants to count them. He also wants to count the ones all over his body. Preferably with his tongue.

'You should,' Melkor tells him. 'There's nothing in it for you if you don't. There won't be any kind of reward. Not even satisfaction. At least if you hated me, you'd be able to bring me down.'

Sometimes, he fears going down. He fears the moment when he's forgotten by everyone, when the echoes of his accomplishments fade into nothing, only to be compared against Manwe's never-ending trail of successes. Like always; no matter what he does, he knows he's never good enough as long as Manwe is there, because Manwe would do the same thing first and therefore better. It's like a curse; only once in his life was Melkor first in their father's eyes, and it was on the day of their birth, when he was the first to be delivered into _that man's_ waiting arms: the first-born son, the pride and fulfilment of all of his father's wishes... for about the initial thirty two minutes of his life.

Manwe is _everything_ that Melkor has ever wanted to be, but more than that, he is everything that Melkor has ever hated. He still gets compared to his younger twin even now, thirty-something years later; and it's not fair. Nothing he does is good enough. He is not good enough.

'I'd rather get you off than bring you down,' Mairon says, light-hearted and flirtatious, and it almost feels as though he is joking around with Melkor, as though he's being _friendly_. It's weird. People avoid being friendly with him if they can.

'The songs,' he mutters, slightly out of his depth. He shakes his head, clears his throat. 'I read some of the lyrics. I've made you some music, too. If this is what you produce when you can't write, I'm afraid for my poetic soul when you're back to your old self,' he praises because, damn, the lyrics entitled _He Who Arises in Might_ alone deserve some compliments. He's not so sure about the second song (that weird, thought-cloud-like part still haunts his brain like a half-forgotten memory or a half-formed melody), but the thing is, he's at the beginning of the notebook filled with dozens of texts which may or may not make it to their new album. Most likely, they will.

Mairon laughs a little, but he winces soon after. He seems to have a headache which is not all that weird if he drank as much as Melkor thinks he did. His eyes are blood-shot, his face is pale. He's beautiful.

_You're sick_ , Melkor thinks to himself even as he leans down to kiss Mairon, as though pulled by an invisible force. It's not pleasant, the feeling of the vocalist's dry lips against his own, but the sigh Mairon lets slip sends a shiver down Melkor's spine. He draws back sooner than he wants to, he stares at Mairon, who stares back, golden eyes wide; and Melkor is  _fucking terrified_ because no matter what, he will  _possess_ Mairon, he will make the beautiful man his own, and he knows this is not love (what-the-fuck-ever is love, anyway? He's not sure he knows).

(He's never been loved. His mother abandoned them. His father chose his younger twin over him without explanation. His brother has always feared him. He has no friends. His only lover hated him and craved his body and tried to own him, and Melkor is flawed, because that fucked up unhealthy relationship of two people who constantly took turns abusing each other in the most horrible ways was the closest thing he's ever had to being cared about. He hated this fact more than he hates the memory of Feanor's smiling face.)

(The smiles were not for him.)

(The wife, nothing but a hapless victim of this whole sick situation, at least was loved.)

'Don't do that again,' Mairon says.

He's enraged. It's easy to tell because his hands are shaking and he looks at Melkor with eyes of liquid gold, burning in anger and betrayal, burning with a passion he's not shown in months; and so Melkor laughs and kisses him again, again a short touch of lips on lips, not even for a whole heartbeat: and when Mairon punches him, it's  _perfect_ .

Thuringwethil glares at them both when she gets back much later to find Mairon still on the armchair and Melkor in the corner with his guitar. Gothmog feeds the vocalist doughnuts and forces lots of coffee into the bassist, ignoring her indignant hisses. Glaurung sleeps the day away. Nobody seems to notice Melkor's split lip. 

It's a bit like the old days.

Melkor misses the old days.

 

4.

Mairon's voice is-

If dark chocolate had a sound, it would be this. Smooth on the ears but rough on the soul, sweet with bitter undertones or the other way around; rich and deep and so ultimately _full._ Of something. Melkor thinks, not for the first time, about the day he first heard that voice: in a smoke-filled room of the karaoke bar, where they were drunk and stupid and merry; Mairon was so hesitant back then, so shy and uncertain of his ability. He stepped onto the mini stage and took the microphone, he bit his lower lip in what could be seen as an attempt to appear coy (it was not; he does that, still, when he's nervous, and his lip tends to take lots of abuse especially before interviews). 

He picked a song, a long and very weird and harsh-sounding and delightfully noisy one – by Utumno! The nerve of him, Melkor thought back then, before – he opened his mouth and his voice was like nothing any of them had ever heard before.

If fire had a voice, it would be this: hot and dangerous and alluring and warm and musky and consuming and seductive and  _ deadly _ . Mairon was barely twenty, but his voice was – is – timeless, something beyond base understanding. Fifteen minutes of the song, just fifteen minutes, but it was the moment when Melkor faced infinity for the first time. 

Now he's used to it, and yet he delights in hearing every syllable falling out of Mairon's mouth in that wonderfully thick Valarin accent which only ever shows when he sings, so carefully hidden on daily basis. 

_ Who will you turn to when you fall? _ Mairon asks in song, lost in the melody Melkor has fashioned after the lyrics, and his voice is-

It's cinnamon and ginger and coffee and vinegar, and it's torture and pain and ecstasy and rapture, and the notes he pulls are hard to believe; he kisses the Void itself when he sings, surely, and he flirts with death and destruction, because otherwise, a mortal being would be unable to  _ do this _ .

_ Who will you turn to when you fall? _ His voice echoes in the far-off corners of the studio and Melkor thinks,

_ Nobody _ , and then,  _ I have already fallen. _

Even Thuringwethil is impressed with the result of the cooperation between Mairon and Melkor; her praise is subtle because she's a bitch, but still Melkor detects the straightening of Mairon's spine, some of his old pride seeping back in when the bassist says,

'Good thing I didn't cut your throat when I had a chance,' and she is looking at her perfectly polished, sharp fingernails as she says it. She used to be friendly with Mairon. Maybe she will be again. Her patience has been tested; Melkor knows how badly she responds to not getting what she wants as soon as she wants it. But now Mairon is recovering. There's molten gold in his eyes and a fiery glow in his copper locks, and he will be alright.

Melkor won't.

_ If you don't return them, _ he heard the eldest of Feanor's sons saying this morning, and the kid is no more than eighteen, but he's fierce and stubborn like his father was, and his hatred is even greater because unlike Feanor, he knows perfectly well who to blame for all the evil in the world;  _ If you don't return everything you stole from my father, I will expose everything you did. I have enough proof. There will be a scandal. Nobody will listen to your shitty music anymore when they find out. _

He's a pretty kid. Tall and ginger and freckled, his features are softer than his father's: he must be popular with the ladies. Briefly, Melkor considers grabbing him by the long, dark red hair and pulling; forcing him to his knees and fucking that insolent mouth of his as he cries. He doesn't. He tells him to go and burn in a fiery pit. 

He will need a lawyer before they even record the one song. 

'I found us a manager,' Glaurung says. He's suspiciously gleeful, possibly high. Maybe not. His whole back is one big band aid; he's been talking about getting a giant golden dragon tattoo for a while now. Melkor doesn't mind. For all he cares, the band members can have their own mothers' mugs tattooed on their foreheads: their job is to make the music sound right. 

Still, a dragon tattoo is a big deal and he wonders, briefly, if Mairon would admire a perfect image of a mighty dragon, etched in thick black lines of ink inside the skin of Melkor's back; would he trail his fingers and tongue over the detailed hide of the beast, would he trace each scale with his tongue? Would his eyes roam eagerly over the entirety of the tattoo, taking in each detail, would he worship the expanses of skin the dragon would be inked into? 

_ No _ .

'We have a manager,' Melkor snaps. He may or may not be glaring. 

'No. We have a drummer who's double-timing as a manager substitute,' Glaurung corrects him. 'He's neither good nor efficient. I've found someone better. The guy's a pro and he won't charge us much at first.'

'Do you listen to a single word you're spewing out of your mouth,' Melkor mutters, irritated. He's being irrational now: he's vaguely aware he should be happy about the development, but he's not. Some wires in his brain must be attached to the wrong sockets.

'What the fuck is your problem?' Glaurung asks, incredulous. His eyes are wide, his pupils are blown. He's high. On adrenaline or on something chemical. It doesn't matter.

Melkor backs down. He's in no mood to get into a fist fight.

Mairon looks at him. His face is unreadable. Melkor thinks he'll find a red-haired hooker tonight. He'll fuck her from behind, he'll be so good she will scream, he'll make her worship him and he'll break her neck when he's done with her. 

He doesn't. When they're finished for the day, he packs up, goes home and sits in his living room with the lights off until morning.

 

5.

_ Fire flames gentle hands darkness anger futile pain _ , a voice whispers in his ear, startling him awake. He looks wildly around, searching for the trespasser; his heart rate is crazy and so are his eyes, but he finds nobody in his apartment but himself. A dream, he realizes; he must have fallen asleep on the coach and he just had a dream. It's been so long since he had any of those, he has forgotten about them entirely. But this one, it was just a verse, he remembers: a line of incoherent thought from Mairon's song.

_ Fire flames gentle hands darkness anger futile pain. _

There's a knock on the front door. Melkor gets up and goes to open, startled when it's Mairon he finds at the doorstep. Mairon, whose hair is dripping wet and whose eyes are ablaze with a golden fire. Mairon, who looks at him with resolve before pushing him inside and against the wall, who kisses him and lets him have no control over the kiss; and it's terrifying and it's exhilarating, and Melkor doesn't know if he can do anything but give in. 

'Let me,' Mairon whispers hotly against his ear. There's an urgency in the rate of his breath, there's a frantic, insane and pulsating pattern to the way his hands wander over Melkor's body. He holds Melkor in a manner that is forceful and he pushes his tongue again inside Melkor's mouth.

'Let me have you,' Mairon pleads, dark and seductive and sweet and bitter, like chocolate; he's ripping Melkor's shirt open before Melkor can do anything, and there's something about him, something dangerous. Melkor feels a numbness overcoming him and he does nothing, he says nothing, when Mairon undresses him swiftly and kisses every inch of him, when he spreads him white open and  _ has him _ ; he screams, just once, at the beginning, and he's half-crazed with the desire to beg, but he knows not what he wants. For a split second, when he opens his eyes to look at Mairon, he sees Feanor instead, his face contorted in hatred and wrath, his skin charred and burnt and rotten; and to that image, an orgasm is wrenched out of him, painful and awful and burning him alive, and so he  _ cries _ \- 

It was just a dream.

_ Fire flames gentle hands darkness anger futile pain. _

There in his living room, Melkor opens his eyes and breathes out deeply once, twice. He stares, unseeing, at the ceiling. Once, when he was still a kid, he had a therapist. She was neither nice nor evil, she just didn't seem to care about him either way, but that was okay. That made it easier to speak out, to tell her about the emptiness he had always felt inside himself: about the spot where some kind of emotion should have been, but never had a chance to develop. She told him his father loved him and his brother really wanted to be his friend. She lied. Years later, after numerous failed attempts at garnering even a tiny bit of affection from his only family, Melkor understood the simple truth: the therapist only told him what she was paid to say. 

Even more than back then, he needs help, but he doesn't know where to seek it.

He slowly gets up and all but crawls to the bedroom where, hidden safely in the drawer beneath the towels, lie the three small jewels Feanor gave to him, the stupid fucking gems that his sons now want back so fucking badly. They're not extraordinary in their looks: unevenly cut, unpolished, even blemished, but the way they reflect light makes Melkor's breath hitch every time he gives in to the urge and looks at them. They're some of Feanor's early work, apparently; he wanted to make them into something one of a kind, something for the generations to remember him by. He never got around to it, even though he used to pick them up quite frequently; he would push Melkor to lie on his back on the bed and he would press gentle caresses to his skin with the jewels' rough edges. 

_ If I could embed them into your skin _ , he would say wistfully. Then, he would shake his head as though laughing it off.  _ What folly!  _ But his eyes would betray the cold assessment, and sometimes there was something in the way he looked at Melkor: like he was not a living being but an object, a blank canvas for him to fill with the art of his own making.

And whereas he could not embed the jewels into Melkor's skin, he painted him with bruises and wounds and hatred until Melkor could take no more, until he almost didn't know who he was, until he lost all that he cared for 

(Oh, how he hated Feanor for making him give up Utumno, how he hates him for that still!)

and there was hardly anything left of Melkor to put back together when his world fell apart. What was left – what is left – is a broken shell, a crooked reflection of what he used to be, of what he had had the potential of becoming. And he needs help, but he doesn't want it, because this, this lack of feeling that he is left with is how he feels safe. He wants to feel safe somewhere. He's so fed up being afraid and alone.

So he cradles the jewels to himself and pretends everything is still okay.

 

6.

The new manager is a guy from Manwe's fucking agency, which makes Melkor want to slit Glaurung's throat and be done with it, but he says nothing and does nothing. They do need a competent manager now and while Gothmog may have sufficed for when they had no new music to make and no new contracts to sign, he's still a drummer first, not a manager. So that guy, Tulkas or something to that effect, takes care of their business while they get in the recording studio and vow not to leave until there's new material ready.

Three more of Mairon's songs are now translated into music, powerful and soul-wrenching and Void-damned good; and he's more himself each day just as each day, Melkor is less.

'Are you sick?' Gothmog asks. He's not really interested to know, Melkor realizes; he just doesn't want any more delays in the recording. So he lies,

'I'm fine,' and he tries to believe the lie so that the others may believe it as well. But he needn't worry, because they don't care. They play their parts in the song and in the band, and they play them excellently, but at the end of day, Melkor Bauglir is not their friend. A colleague at best; someone from work. 

'You're not fine,' Mairon tells him later, when Gothmog is out with the others for a smoke and they are both left alone in each other's company. 'You're a fucking mess.'

'I'm a fucking mess,' Melkor admits, because there's no hiding it from someone who used to be the worse off of them not long ago. 'I'll be fine though.'

'You won't be,' Mairon says, seeing through the lie immediately. 'You won't be fine because you don't want to be. There's something fundamentally wrong with you,' he mutters, 'and you think you're beyond return.'

'I wanted to fuck you when I thought you were weak and helpless,' Melkor confesses. He says it mostly to get Mairon the fuck away from him, in hopes of scaring the kid away. 

'Yes,' Mairon acknowledges, brushing away the hair falling to his face with his hand. 'But you didn't. If you wanted to prove that you're beyond help, fuck you. You're not.'

'I don't want help,' Melkor says. He has much more he can say: that he doesn't deserve help because he has never been whole; that he doesn't need help because whatever it is he is feeling, it too will come to pass once he gets used to it; that he can't be helped because deep down, he thinks everything that has ever happened to make him like he is was a punishment for some sins he has no recollection of. He remains silent.

'I know,' Mairon replies. 

His golden eyes are wiser than his age suggests. Melkor turns his back to him. 

When the others return, they pick up their roles like they never fell out of them. The songs come to life under their expert care. They make progress. 

 

7.

There it is: the extraordinary talent that made Melkor notice them all in the first place. Gothmog is tall and bulky, with a face that most would call ugly, yet there is something of an ethereal beauty in it when his eyes are screwed shut and his lips open and close as he breathes heavily, banging his head to the infernal beat he strikes out of the drum set, and in that moment – in that time and space – he is a conqueror and a demon and he is - everything; Thuringwethil is her most distant and cold when her fingers move over the strings of her bass guitar, as though the deep rumble of her instrument envelopes her in a shroud of fog and ice, warning everyone not to come too close, not to touch – her touch kills the toughest men – she is a goddess in the body of a nightmare. Glaurung is massive and slow, but the muscles in his thick arms flex attractively and the sweat on his brow gives his golden skin a kind of glow, and he leads in with a solo Melkor wrote especially for him, destructive, violent,  _ perfect  _ like dragon fire – he is the dragon – he is. Melkor is the chaos that drives them, he is the unrelenting dark force that runs deep in their veins and spurs them on; he is the shadow and the storm, his face reflects all that they are and from under his fingers the strings of his guitar produce the growling threat of the thunder and the wailing lament of the wind, tortured, trapped and ever terrifying; he plays with the fire and he burns – he burns – he burns.

And Mairon, finally, Mairon is the fire, consuming all on his path, devouring souls and minds, and his voice – the flames licking at the hearts of those turned to sin, because he is sinful, he is sinful: wild and untamed and hateful and dark, and so fucking beautiful when he sings deceitful promises and leads them all astray. He's the temptress and the liar, he's the deadly force behind the strike of thunder, he's the aftermath of a blazing inferno lost in the darkness at the beginning of the world, he is – Melkor wants – it's –

(When he was sixteen and stupid, he kissed Manwe on the lips. His heart had stopped pumping blood for just a moment and there was this weird scary pulsating feeling under his eyelids when he did it, and for a second, he thought he was dying, he thought it was  _ right _ , he thought, maybe this was how it was supposed to be. The punch that came later felt natural. The blows that followed, he deserved and adored. 

Hearing Mairon sing, hearing the verses from that little notebook dedicated  _ to M _ , the words he has engraved underneath his eyelids by now

_ Whose soul will you devour? _

-it's the same, the same kind of feeling, gut-wrenching, nauseating, and he awaits the purity of the physical pain that he is conditioned to desire. 

It never comes. 

The song ends, the silence falls and reveals their mortality – their true faces – and he is still high. When he gets home, he brings himself off to an image of a wrecked train imprinted behind his eyelids. He falls asleep on the coach, with his jeans pooled at his ankles. He hates himself.)

 

8.

Of course everything goes to hell sooner rather than later; and Melkor curses himself for not having predicted this – he's supposed to be smart, he's supposed to be unstoppable and he knew there was something weird about it from the start, he knew but he did nothing – even as he tries to wriggle out of the grasp of muscular arms. The man is grinning at him, amused by his struggle, emboldened by the way he almost panics, almost breaks down – 

'Don't make it harder on yourself,' he tells Melkor and rips the front of his jeans apart. There is something primal in his gaze that scares Melkor more than his own mind and his own memories, and he struggles more, earning a punch to his jaw that makes him black out for a second – for a lifetime – 

When the darkness clears away, he feels numb and indifferent and he doesn't fight it when the man  _ fucks him _ hard and unforgiving; it hurts, it must hurt, but he doesn't feel the pain: only despair and fear and numbness, curling within his gut like cigarette smoke. He is powerless, stripped of everything he wants to be; he moans when the man calls him by his stage name, he moves his hips, desperate for the perverse pleasure of being used like this; and he remembers Feanor, lips curled in disgust and a mocking glint in his sharp eyes, and he whispers,

'M-more,' and the man laughs, laughs even as he breaks him further and further until there's nothing left but this madness, in and out and in and out and in and out and – 

'You're a dumb whore,' the man tells him after, smiling pleasantly, almost kindly, as he takes a pair of scissors and pulls on a strand of Melkor's long black hair. 'It's as though you want everyone to hurt you. Do you?' He asks, cutting the strand at the middle of its length. Melkor cannot reply, he cannot react: there is a gag in his mouth and his wrists are handcuffed behind his back, and he's numb, and everything aches. So the man repeats the motion with another strand of hair, then another, and Melkor can only watch helplessly as the long black tresses fall to the floor in front of him.

'You know, your brother never talks about you,' the man tells him. His tone is conversational, his hands are gentle even as he haphazardly cuts away Melkor's hair at random lengths. There is a snipe of the scissor blades right above his left ear; then another somewhere near the shoulder. 

_ Stop _ , he wants to beg, but even that possibility is stolen from him: all ways out are sealed and he cannot prostrate himself and ask for mercy, because his torturer has none. 

'He never even mentions you,' the man continues. 'Well, actually, that's a lie. He mentioned you once, when your band made the news. You know. When you won that one fucking competition. He said, “You know, that guy is my brother. He's fucked up,” and we laughed because we thought he was joking. Turns out, he was right. You're fucked up, aren't you,' he says. 

Melkor is about to pass out, he's too tired to hear this, too tired to care anymore; a slap to his face followed by another keeps him alert as the man grabs another handful of his hair from the top of his head and, forsaking the gentleness from before, cruelly hacks at it close to the skin of Melkor's skull. Tears – he's not crying, he doesn't know how to – tears of humiliation and defeat and hatred flow angrily down Melkor's face, burning a tattoo of rage and despair into his pale skin: and his tormentor laughs merrily, wipes the tears away and says,

'No wonder everyone wants to hurt you. You're pretty like this. You're finally pretty when you cry,' and he pats Melkor's cheek in a mock-caress. He leaves right after he's done and Melkor kneels amidst the graveyard of his hair, a chain around his wrists and a noose around his neck; and he wishes this were another one of his nightmares.

The band accept his new hairstyle – half of the head shaved, the rest left long and crazy and wild – with naught but a blink of their eyes. They think it suits him. Fits in with his  _ deranged psychopath _ image. 

They look for a new manager when he orders it. Tulkas doesn't show up anymore. Mairon looks at him with understanding. Melkor hates it. He calls his brother that night. Nobody returns his calls.

 

0.

(His life is this: 

When he was five, Manwe told him he was weird. They were outside playing with the snow when Melkor found a dead rabbit, gutted by something that must have fled when it heard the two little boys, abandoning its prey: the bloody entrails made a stark contrast against the white surface covering the whole world like a fluffy blanket. Melkor's innocence died that day. Manwe told him the rabbit was disgusting and started crying in horror when Melkor tried to push the entrails back to its ripped belly.

_ Don't you understand,  _ Melkor wanted to tell him but didn't, engrossed in his work as he was,  _ Don't you see? I can fix him. I'm fixing him. He will be fine, Manwe! Look, he will be fine. _

But it was not fine.

'There's something twisted inside of your brain,' Manwe told him much later, when they were sixteen and when Melkor lay beaten up at his feet. 'For fuck's sake, Melkor. Next time you touch me, I'll kill you.'

So Melkor ran and never looked back.)

 

9.

Thirty-three days later,  _ King of Arda _ is. It's finished. The recording. It's done. Twelve songs, all contained within that ridiculous little notebook filled with squiggles and bubbles, with stupid confessions and messy lyrics. Melkor smokes again. His throat stings every time he breathes in the smoke. His lungs protest when he walks a flight of stairs. He lives for this.

'We may yet release the album this year,' Gothmog says. He's calmer now; he is not needed in the recording studio, so he spends more time securing dates and finding clubs willing to put  _ Angband  _ in the spotlight for a night live. People are talking, he reports. It seems like many are awaiting their new material. 

(Feanor's eldest son shows up once more, threatening to ruin him, threatening to kill him. He's drunk or on drugs; he's as scared as he tries to be scary and Melkor almost breaks: he stands over the kid, he grabs his chin and tells him to go fuck himself. The jewels burn his hands when he tries to find comfort in them that night. He throws them across the room. One rolls under the wardrobe. He leaves it there.)

'You okay?' Mairon asks him when Melkor coughs after chain-smoking half a pack at once. 

'What do you think,' Melkor replies, detached and possibly a bit high. He licks his lips and watches Mairon watch him: he sees how Mairon's golden eyes follow the movement of his tongue. 

_ Obsession _ , he thinks.  _ He's obsessed with me. _

'You're going to kill yourself sooner or later,' the vocalist informs him. He's calm and collected, his order perfectly in place. As he flourishes, Melkor deteriorates. As he rises, Melkor falls.

'I don't care,' Melkor says. He lifts a hand to play with a strand of his hair, but it meets nothing above his left ear. He looks away at the wall, arm falling limply and awkwardly back to his side; his eyes tear up and he doesn't want Mairon to look. 

He's still standing. He's still swinging. He's still on top of the world or heading there.

'You do,' Mairon sighs. 

He's gone before Melkor can respond. The loss of hair hurts less than this.

 

0.

(When he was twenty, he met Feanor.

And it was like a dream at first: they fell into bed and couldn't get enough of each other. It was intoxicating. It was addictive. Melkor was hooked and so he didn't notice it at first: the wedding band. The absences. The excuses. It was all okay anyway, once he did notice and Feanor told him the truth; the wife and kids didn't matter, because for sure Feanor loved him. 

For sure.

Why else would he want him, flawed and marred as he was? 

_ Why else would I want you, indeed?  _ Feanor would ask, leaving a trail of bruises across his torso and a trail of cuts across his soul. His voice would be gentle but his hands would be rough, a jewel-smith's hands, a blacksmith's hands working Melkor as though we were a metal alloy, sturdy and raw and tough; as though he could take it without breaking. As though he could be made into something he was not.

But for sure, Feanor cared about him, and so for years he endured the loving torment until,

_ You're nothing to me, _

and the words cut through him like a cleaver, leaving him gasping for breath, confused and betrayed and dead inside. But he had no reply because he had nothing to offer: he had already given away everything, everything he was, everything he could ever be and it was not enough.

_ You're nothing to me, _ Feanor told him and left him all alone in what felt like the Void, empty and cold and- 

_ You're so fucked up _ , he told himself.) 

 

10.

'I wasn't really raped,' Mairon tells him when they're next alone together. 

The words are said so casually and matter-of-factly, Melkor thinks he's imagined them for about thirty seconds before he realizes they were real. It's... weird, because he doesn't really understand what this admission should mean. What it changes. Between them, beyond them.

'Were you pretend-raped, then,' he says more than asks, opting for dry humour and biting remarks because it's his comfort zone. 

'He offered to buy me a drink, I told him to fuck off, he insulted me, I framed him,' Mairon clarifies. He sits back against the wall, eyes closed, pose relaxed. It's the most carefree Melkor has seen him in months. There is something eerily comforting in this realization. 

'I was in a bad place because of you,' the vocalist continues. 'I wanted to get your attention. I wanted to make you see  _ me _ . Not hear my voice, you always did. You always do,' he corrects himself, shakes his head. 'Of course, you were too stuck in your own nightmare to see. And you didn't even realize, did you. How fucking dead you really are.'

'When I really  _ saw you _ ,' Melkor mutters, resting the back of his head against the same wall. 'When I did that, it fucked me up. It fucked me up more,' he says. 'I've never been loved.'

It sounds pathetic, said out loud like that, but that's the truth, the whole, Void-damned truth, laid bare for Mairon to see. And he does see, because he does nothing to deny it, he speaks nothing. He just nods his head and breathes in, breathes out. Melkor wants to join in, but there's something weird in the way his lungs work, in the way he's choking on nothing; and then, to his astonishment, he's sobbing, and Mairon pulls him into a loose embrace. 

His arms are warm and safe, his even breathing pattern and his regular heartbeat are soothing; Melkor clings to him like a lifeline, because he will drown if he lets go, he will drown, he knows it. Minutes pass like hours, the silence stretches on, broken only by sobs which softly turn into hitched gasps, then fade to nothing. It's shameful in a way, how he allowed himself to break down, how he was so easily defeated by his own emotions which he thought didn't exist, which he still thinks don't exist, not really-

'I love you,' Mairon tells him. 

Melkor closes his eyes and breathes out. He is being manipulated. He doesn't care. This is a start. This is an edge he can grasp to crawl out from the hole that is his whole fucking life.

 

0.

(He returns the jewels to Maedhros, eventually. The kid thinks he's the one who won. Melkor wonders, briefly, if his scream would be pretty if he cut the kid's fucking hand off. He asks Mairon later. Mairon laughs. 

He's got a lovely kind of laugh.

Later, in bed, he cuffs Melkor to the bed by one hand and fucks him again and again until Melkor can do nothing but moan incoherent nonsense. The neighbours call the police. The officers on patrol are sufficiently embarrassed. When they leave, Mairon lets Melkor fuck him in turn.)

 

11.

Life is still a fuck-ton of trouble. Melkor still can't deal with most of it alone. Mairon still loves him, though, with a twisted and obsessive and suffocating kind of love. For the time being, this is enough. For the time being, maybe, slowly, he is healing. 

 


End file.
